When PolitiFact took no corrective action in response to our November 12 revision/correction request respecting a PolitiFact Virginia fact check from Nov. 11, 2022, Zebra Fact Check submitted a formal complaint to the International Fact-Checking Network.
“Independent Cities”: PolitiFact and PolitiFact Virginia Ignore Correction Request
On Nov. 11, 2022, PolitiFact Virginia published a fact check of Gov. Glen Youngkin’s claim thathe had won cities that no Republican had won before in Virginia. PolitiFact chose a bizarre method for checking Youngkin’s claim, and contradicted itself on the number of cities in Virginia.
As of today, PolitiFact has taken no action to explain or improve the metric it chose for the fact check, and likewise has failed to fix the internal contradiction on the number of cities.
That failure inarguably fails to represent the “scrupulous” adherence to policy on corrections that the IFCN’s statement of principles supposedly requires of IFCN signatories.
Though Gov. Youngkin was speaking to a New York audience, PolitiFact Virginia tested his claim according to the number of “independent cities” in Virginia. In its quick summary near the top of the fact check, PolitiFact Virginia reports there are 35 independent cities in Virginia. Later in the article, PolitiFact Virginia says there are 38 independent cities in Virginia.
Summary:
Youngkin won 14 of Virginia’s 35 cities in that election.
Body of the fact check:
Youngkin won 14 of Virginia’s 38 independent cities: Bristol; Buena Vista; Chesapeake; Colonial Heights; Covington; Galax; Hopewell; Lynchburg; Norton; Poquoson; Radford; Salem; Virginia Beach and Waynesboro.
The independent cities not found within Virginia are Baltimore MD, St. Louis MO and Carson City NV. That’s it.
Why is this information important to the fact check? Because nobody who isn’t aware of Virginia’s distinctive “independent cities” arrangement will understand that Virginia contains many “cities” in the typically understood sense that are not “independent cities.” In short, PolitiFact Virginia did not bother to count the number of Virginia cities as they would be understood to Youngkin’s New York audience. PolitiFact Virginia did not even bother to explain Virginia’s unusual near-monopoly on U.S. “independent cities.”
PolitiFact should have settled on searching for novel GOP governor support in “cities” the way New Yorkers would likely understand “cities” instead of using Virginia’s specialized and narrow definition. And PolitiFact Virginia should have given a consistent report of the number of Virginia “independent cities.”
I sent PolitiFact a description of the story’s problems similar to that above, and sketched the potential fixes. After a week, PolitiFact Virginia made no changes to the fact check, including keeping its self-contradictory report on the number of “independent cities” in Virginia.
Does failing to fix obvious errors pass the IFCN’s lofty journalistic standards for the fact-checking community?
Thanks for your attention to this matter.